


the same love keeps us alive

by olandesevolante



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Longing, M/M, Slash, reversed soulbond, soulbond-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 20:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13666953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olandesevolante/pseuds/olandesevolante
Summary: Domi has never dreamt of being part of a movie-like love story, but he finds himself stuck in one nonetheless.





	the same love keeps us alive

**Author's Note:**

> -based on a prompt I remember reading a lifetime ago in another fandom, if I was able to find it again I'd link it; the main idea is that their bond makes them sick when they're together;  
> -title from a poem by Anna Akhmatova;  
> -English isn't my first language, so please forgive my mistakes.

_Your love allowed me to come closer,_

_forgave screams, beat the nerves,_

_forgave the pain, took risks._

_(Tak krasivo, Sergey Lazarev)_

 

When it happens, they’re totally clueless about it.

At first Sascha thinks it’s just stress the reason behind his constant migraine during tournaments, and anxiety is why he finds himself in the bathroom throwing up all that he ate more than often, while Dom doesn’t know what to do to help him other than trying to soothe him with gentle caresses on his back and his fingers that kept Sascha’s long hair away from his mouth. But then Domi too starts feeling sick when they’re near, his head resembles an explosion every time the German holds his hand, and when Sascha’s too near he can feel his limbs go weak.

«I’ve never heard of something similar before,» says Sascha when Domi explain him his theory.

«Of course, who would say out loud that he can’t be with the person he loves because he also makes him physically sick?» He has a point, the German has to admit it.

The Austrian is sat at the kitchen table as they talk, and his hands are trembling while they’re curled around a cup of tea. Sascha’s fingers itch with the desire of holding them, steadying them, leave a soft kiss on those loved wrists. And instead he’s forced to look at the scene from a distance because he knows that touching Domi will mean a searing pain in both of their heads and tea splattered all over the floor.

He decides to ignore this idea and goes straight to the bed, lets himself fall on it with all his weight. Domi knows the German saw his hands shaking, and hates the situation even more. He gets up before he finishes his tea and joins his lover, who stubbornly reaches for his hand as soon as he feels the mattress dip beside him. Watching Sascha laying on the bed in pain, because, he says, _we don’t have any scientific proof that the problem is the other one so there is no reason for me not to touch you_ , Domi can’t anymore stand it. They both know the only solution they can think of now is stop seeing each other, even if they don’t say it out loud not to make it realer and more painful than how already it is.

«What are we going to do with the matches? We’re going to play against each other, at some point.»

«We could play in different tournaments,» suggests the Austrian.

Sascha snorts. «Yeah. Sure. Who of us is going to give up Wimbledon? And let me guess, you get the ones on clay, you don’t even have to tell me that.»

The last line bring a smile on Domi’s lips, despite everything. «We could alternate. The ones I play in this year, you get them the next one.»

«And give up the chance to complete a Grand Slam?»

The Austrian rolls his eyes and Sascha smiles, probably his first true smile of the entire night, and gives a gentle squeeze to his lover’s fingers.

Domi can’t resist lifting their linked hands and leaving a kiss on the German’s knuckles. He can see Sascha’s eyebrows knitting because of the pain, but also the tender smile on his lips at the gesture. Domi knows he’s going to cry if he looks at his lover’s face a second more, so he turns his head away and fixes his gaze on the curtains.

«Hey. Don’t,» whispers Sascha, sitting up and nuzzling his neck with the nose, his hands tangling in the older’s hair. «We’ll split for a little time, just enough to understand how to come back together. It will be over before we think, I’m sure. I want to live with you.»

Domi chooses to believe these words that soothe a little his heart, at least that.

Although the terrible pain they both are experiencing, that night they’re tender to each other, soft kisses and slow movements in a goodbye that they both don’t know how long it will last. Sascha falls asleep with his head on Domi’s right shoulder who, for once, doesn’t complain at all about the long hair tickling his nose.

When Domi wakes up, there’s just a note on the table, a single sentence of three simple words with even a sketched heart under them and he would laugh at the cheesiness of it all if he wasn’t feeling like something exploded in the space between his lungs and now it threatens to run up his throat and make him cry. He finds himself sitting on the floor shaking with sobs he’s not able to hold down before he can even realize it.

 

\-----

 

Domi doesn’t think Sascha will change his plans. It’s Sascha and he’s stubborn – and it’s part of why Domi likes him so much. Except now he would gladly throw away all of the younger’s stubbornness and have in exchange him in his same bed. The same room at least would be enough.

They meet during tournaments because they have too, they can’t decide when to play their matches, but they try to ignore each other the best that they can, only giving a brief salute and nothing more. Everyone can see there’s something wrong between them, they were attached to the hip until the day before in these occasions, but Domi couldn’t care less about rumours of them having a fight. He laughs, though, when a newspaper claims they quarrelled because of a girl. _If only they knew_ , he thinks.

They don’t meet, they don’t call each other, but still they text sometimes, something they still have to give up because they shared too much to just close any contact in the time of a single night. Their messages are nothing like the ones they used to send, but it’s the only channel left open they have so Domi waits for those moments when he’ll see Sascha sent him something, even just a _good luck_ before a match or an emoji to celebrate one of his wins. Domi’s fingers shake every time he gets one of these texts, but he couldn’t care less.

One day, Sascha stops returning his texts and that hurts more than his physical proximity ever had. Headache, nausea, whatever his body decided to kill him with that day because of the German, it was bearable on a mental level. It hurt his arms, his legs, his stomach, but he knew it was worth it, it meant having his lover beside him, it meant being loved. Domi has never even been a romantic person, committed to the idea that there’s only one right person for everyone in the world, never a believer of the theory that you can have the starts with only a man on the entire Earth, but still, he knows that what he has with Sascha is different from everything he has ever felt for everyone else. Every song he has heard, every book he has read, everything has a sense when he’s with the German.

If ever the theories on the existence of soul mates are real, then he knows for sure that Sascha is his.

Except now the younger cut him off his life and Domi can’t find anything more depressing than knowing the person you love is reading the texts and deliberately choosing not to answer. He just keeps staring at their Whatsapp chat, the blue ticks under his sent messages like a knife in his heart.

Focusing on tennis is even more difficult now that it ever has been when he was worried about the sickness he and his lover were experiencing without knowing what it was. It’s time for clay-court season and he’s never felt less desire to play it.

One night, though, Domi wakes up to the sound of his telephone buzzing and buzzing on the night desk beside him.

«...llo?», he answers trying to stifle a yawn, without bothering to read the caller ID. The only thing he can hear as answer are shaking breaths on the other side.

«Hello?», he asks again, and when he doesn’t hear any word once again Domi looks at the screen of the phone, just to be sure it’s not a prank call. His heart skips a beat when he reads the name.

«Sascha? Sascha, what’s happening?» Now fully awake, Domi shifts to a sitting position.

«I can’t...», a muffled sigh, «I can’t go on anymore like this.»

Domi has a hard time picturing Sascha crying on the phone and giving up, on whatever he’s giving up now: the only times he’s seen tears in the German’s eyes have been because of tennis, and even there it has been no more than tears of rage at not being able to perform like he wanted to, like he knew he was able too. Sascha is too proud to openly cry in front of people, even in front of him. Those times he didn’t want to be cheered, didn’t want anyone to tell him that everything was going to be alright; he had nothing of the times in which he silently asks Domi for comfort. He’d just furiously wiped at his eyes and put up a proud expression to show everyone that the defeat didn't mean anything.

«Tell me what’s up, baby.» The endearments escapes his lips before he can think about it, but even if he could, Domi wouldn’t take it back.

There are some seconds of silence in which Domi is tempted to press him. Then, Sascha starts talking and it’s like watching a river flooding. «It’s not working, nothing works. I pulled out of Rome officially saying that I had minor health issues but the fact is that there isn’t a cure for my health problem. I miss you so much that it’s hard to concentrate on anything else, and then if I just start thinking of you I feel sick like I felt when we were together, my legs are suddenly dead tired and my head throbs. And I can’t just not think of you, as soon as I’m not totally focused on what I do my mind slips on the memories of us... I cannot do this anymore, Domi, I cannot, I’m going crazy. I even tried to get drunk not to think of you, and I ended up even more sick, because the alcohol couldn’t erase you not even for a second. I’m-»

But what Sascha is, Domi is never going to find out, because he German is shook again by sighs and can’t say another word.

«Come here to me,» whispers Domi, his voice so faint that he’s sure Sascha hasn’t heard him as soon as he stops talking. «Come to me, Sascha. I miss you too, I miss us so much that I don’t even have words that can define how much.»

«I can’t. If we meet we’re both going to hurt again. _You_ are going to hurt because of me, and I can’t stand it,» answers the German, his voice a little less shaky now as he’s calming down.

But Domi isn’t going to have it, this time. «It hurts when you’re here, but also when you’re not here. It’s a different kind of pain and I can’t endure neither of them, but since I have to feel one, then let me choose the one I prefer.»

Sascha closes the call and for some minutes Domi is sure that this has been the last chance for him to talk with the German, he’s never going to have him back. Then, his phone buzzes. It’s the screenshot of a plane ticket for the morning after, the arrival time underlined in yellow, matched with an ask: _tell me your address?_

_\-----_

 

Kissing Sascha for the first time after months feels like being able to breathe again, at first, and like breathing underwater when their lips part. And just like two drowning men desperately tending to the surface in need of fresh air, they keep searching for each other, exchanging long kisses for minutes and minutes, getting reacquainted with the body of the other, hands roaming on bones and muscles and curves and edges too loved to be forgotten.

Next to him, Domi can hear Sascha snoring softly, his hands tucked under the pillow and his long hair all ruffled, something of which Domi is guilty too. A soft smile lingers on his lips as he thinks of the time spent carding his fingers through the hair of his lover, gently when lying together in the afterglow, pulling and demanding in the heat of the climax. He suppresses the wave of nausea provoked by these thoughts with a deep sigh, throwing an arm over his eyes and breathing deeply. His bones ache as if he had run on the sand for an entire day, but he’s happier than he’s been for some time now.

«Are you hurting too?» Lost in his thoughts, Domi didn’t realize the German woke up.

«Yes.»

«Are you happy too?»

«Yes.»

Sascha’s lips ghost over his neck, following invisible lines that bring them to his cheek, his nose, his own lips where they leave a fleeting kiss before the German moves away and leans his head on the pillow, very next to Domi’s hair.

«We haven’t found a solution.»

«We haven’t found a solution _yet_.» Domi turns his head to watch Sascha in the eyes and finds him worrying his lower lip between his teeth.

«We’re going to find it together?»

«Yes,» smiles Domi, moving nearer to his partner. «This time, we’re doing it together.» And surrounded by the scent of the German’s skin, his long limbs tangled around him, there’s nothing he can’t accomplish, he thinks.


End file.
